Truth Bomb Tuesday: We’re still all in this together.
Anzac Day felt different this year.
It’s a bit strange. In some ways it feels more distant. Like WWI feels like a thousand years ago – like an entirely different age.
In that way, Covid is an entirely modern phenomenon.
We’ve had pandemics before, sure. But Covid had the impact it did because we live in such a globalised world now. Within a month it had completely derailed the entire global economy.
Like, completely knocked it side-ways.
It was a wake-up call to just how interconnected we had all become – and that was actually pretty awesome in some ways. It was a good reminder. It’s good to remember we’re all in this together.
(Less bombs. More Zoom calls. That’s my vision for humanity.)
And so Covid held a mirror up to the year 2020, and we saw how thoroughly modern 2020 actually was.
Not only that, our response to Covid was to actually turn around and accelerate all the technological and social changes that were already in place.
Zoom calls are the perfect example. We had the capacity to have digital meetings before. But in 2019, it still seemed like a long way off before pretty much all of our corporate communication was going online.
And then bam. Covid. Suddenly everything’s online. And now I reckon a lot of companies are thinking about turning their meeting rooms into a foosball tournament halls.
And so we went from modern to ultra-modern in a matter of months.
That’s what it feels like to me.
And so when I look back through the mists of time, to the 25th of April 1915 – it just feels like forever ago.
It’s never felt so distant before. The world was such a different place.
But, at the same time, it also feels close.
Gallipoli was one of those rare events that unified a nation – Australia was unified in grief, unified in our resolve to do what was needed to get through as best we could.
Covid reminds us, I think, that we can still be challenged as a nation.
Covid has been a light touch, in terms of its impact on Australia. It could have been a lot, lot worse. But still, it was enough to give us a scare.
And it was enough to remind us that we’re not just a random collection of individuals –we’re not nothing more than a geographic clumping of 24 million different needs and agendas.
We are a nation. And that means we are in it together.
That was true in 1915, and it’s true now.
And so that’s what I’m choosing to reflect on this Anzac Day.
We are all in the same boat. We share a common destiny.
The more that we embrace this, the more that we are able to chip in and just do what needs to be done, the stronger we all will be.
The Anzacs defined this idea for us.
We all have a duty to carry it forward.
DB.